Claire McCaskill to pay back taxes on plane

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) said Monday she will sell her private plane and pay back $287,273 in four years of back taxes, the latest chapter in a politically embarrassing saga for the moderate Democrat facing a tough reelection battle in 2012.

McCaskill has been answering questions about the plane since POLITICO recently reported that she billed taxpayers for a political trip around Missouri. POLITICO also reported that McCaskill spent $76,000 from her Senate budget on trips on the aircraft over the past four years, prompting the senator to refund the Treasury Department more than $88,000 for the cost of the trips plus pilot fees.

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POLITICO 44

McCaskill’s announcement Monday is the latest twist in a political scandal that has dogged her for the past two weeks. The expensive fiasco clashes with her self-made image as a reformer and good-government advocate during her first term in the Senate. McCaskill has now shelled out more than $375,000 in payments to cover the cost of the plane flights and back taxes, a series of events the senator herself has called “embarrassing.”

On top of this, McCaskill signed on in February as a co-sponsor of Senate legislation that would fire federal employees if they are “seriously delinquent” in paying their own federal taxes.

Back home, local papers have picked up on the plane story, and Missouri Republicans aren’t letting go, either. They filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee last week, requesting an inquiry into whether McCaskill improperly used taxpayer money to cover the cost of at least one political trip on her plane. And they ran a full-page ad in the Springfield Leader Monday, calling on her to release tax records for her aircraft.

“This is not good,” McCaskill said during conference call with reporters on Monday. “I’ve been sick to my stomach for four days since this has happened, and I really do feel a lot of people are going to say, ‘How in the world? They’ve got this big business and they’re wealthy. How did they not self-report this airplane?’”

The Missouri Democrat has tried to be proactive in dealing with the matter. When contacted initially about the propriety of taxpayer-funded reimbursements for the 89 flights, McCaskill voluntarily issued a check to the Treasury Department to cover the cost of the trips.

Yet there remained questions about whether McCaskill and her husband had fully paid property taxes on the plane. McCaskill called a Monday press conference after POLITICO had been pressing her for several days over that issue.

“I have convinced my husband to sell the damn plane,” McCaskill said. “I will never set foot on the plane again.”

McCaskill said there was no effort to evade taxes, noting that she had paid $38,800 in sales taxes on the plane for the past 55 months. But she said she was “disappointed” in herself for not ensuring the property taxes were paid.

The plane, a 2001 single-engine turbo-prop Pilatus PC-12, is hangared at Spirit of St. Louis Airport, McCaskill confirmed. But it’s owned by Timesaver LLC, a Delaware-based corporation created in July 2006 during her Senate run against Republican incumbent Jim Talent.

Many companies incorporate in Delaware because of its lax tax laws and business-friendly environment; the state doesn’t charge a personal property tax. But McCaskill was still on the hook in Missouri because the Show Me State requires aircraft owners to pay personal property taxes in the county where the plane is physically hangared.

McCaskill insisted she wasn’t trying to dodge paying taxes on the plane, which Aircraft Bluebook says is valued at $2.2 million.

“Frankly, having the plane owned in Delaware would not negate the necessity of paying the personal property tax in Missouri” she said. “This is a mistake. It should have been reported in Missouri. It was owed in Missouri. It will be paid in Missouri today.”

In 2010, McCaskill’s husband paid $1,082 in personal property taxes on two vehicles, a Saturn Vue and a Chevy Tahoe, St. Louis County tax records show. But the senator said she only recently became aware that Missouri also imposed a property tax in private aircraft. A previous plane was kept in Illinois, which does not have a personal property tax, she said.

Readers' Comments (157)

Maybe some of these Blue states would'nt be in finacial trouble if they could get the Democrats to pay their taxes on time. Obama wondered after hearing about her not paying taxes, if she should be considered for a Cabinet position.

Lunatic-left d-crat socialists love to tax you to death, then tax your death, and have repeatedly shown that they will raise every tax and impose every fee that they can dream up to get them more money. But, like lunatic-left socialist d-crat TAX CHEATS geithner, rangel, daschle, olbermann, mccaskill, killifer, solis, kirk, sebelius, kerry and millions more, they hate to pay taxes for the bonuses, bailouts, pork and socialist welfare boondoggles they create, and they'll cheat the government out of every penny they can.

The lady is a Thugocrat. Nothing will happen to her. A Republican or regular citizen would be buried and then paved over. Indeed, it only makes her a more qualified Dem politician … and union labeled too. all